Former Matsuoka Family Residence

A Thatched Farmstead in the Nagai Basin

The Former Matsuoka Family Residence (旧松岡家住宅, Kyū Matsuoka-ke Jūtaku) is a farmstead in Utamaru, Nagai City, Yamagata Prefecture, where a late Edo-period farmhouse and four outbuildings put up between 1887 and 1932 were listed together as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on 2022/10/31.

It lies in farming country south of central Nagai, out among the rice paddies of the Nagai Basin. Yamagata Prefecture's description of the listing captures the setting well: ringed by its windbreak trees, the compound seems to float on the flooded fields, and that silhouette is what the listing set out to protect.

The five listed buildings are the main house, the front storehouse, the rear storehouse, the stable, and the work shed and cowshed. Together they read like a working diagram of a rice-growing household: a thatched home, two earth-walled storehouses for unhulled and hulled rice, a stall for draught animals, and a shed for tools joined to a barn for dairy cows.

Five Buildings, Five Dates

Lined up by the dates in the Agency for Cultural Affairs database, the buildings of the Former Matsuoka Family Residence span well over a century.

• Main house: late Edo period (the database gives 1751 to 1830), renovated in 2000 and 2020
• Front storehouse: 1887, renovated in the mid-Showa period
• Rear storehouse: 1899, renovated in the mid-Showa period
• Work shed and cowshed: 1908, extended in the mid-Showa period
• Stable: 1932, renovated in the mid-Showa period

The house came first and stayed put. The two storehouses and the work shed followed in the second half of the Meiji era, and the stable arrived in the early Showa years. Most of the outbuildings were reworked in the mid-twentieth century, while the house itself was repaired in the Heisei and Reiwa eras and has kept its thatch.

The roofs tell the same layered story. The main house is still thatched; the stable and the work shed carry temporary sheet-metal roofing laid over their thatch; and the prefecture notes that the front storehouse was once thatched as well. Thatch was very likely the roof of the whole yard once, and the main house is where it survives in full.

How the Compound Is Laid Out

The plan is simple to grasp once you know that the front of the Former Matsuoka Family Residence faces east. Working from the Agency's descriptions:

At the centre: the main house

The main house stands in the middle of the plot facing east. Its hipped thatched roof carries a smoke-vent gable at the centre of the front, and there are two doorways on the east side, one to the north and one to the south. With a building area of 138 square metres it is by far the largest of the five.

The east front: front storehouse, work shed and cowshed

The front storehouse sits to the south-east and faces west, looking back at the house. To the north-east, the work shed and cowshed run north to south and line up with the storehouse, so that the two together form the face the farm shows to the outside world.

North and north-west: the stable and rear storehouse

The stable stands right beside the house on the north, facing east and joined to its earth-floored work area. The rear storehouse sits to the north-west, also facing east, and closes off the western side of the yard.

Crops and work at the front, animals and storage behind the house: the division is easy to see even on a plan.

Rice and Livestock

The front storehouse was built to hold unhulled rice, and inside it are grain bins opened and closed with stacked boards. The rear storehouse has an earth-floored workroom on the north and, on the south, a two-storey store with board floors for rice. Keeping grain in two places, before and after hulling, shows how central the paddy fields were to the household.

There were two kinds of animal on the farm as well. The stable housed horses and cattle used in the fields, while the cowshed attached to the work shed held dairy cows. Draught animals and milking cows under neighbouring roofs hint at how a modern farm in the basin widened its business beyond rice.

The Listing

All five buildings were registered on 2022/10/31 in the 103rd round of national registrations, each under the criterion of contributing to the historic landscape, and they carry the consecutive registration numbers 06-0203 to 06-0207.

• Main house (06-0203): wooden, single storey, thatched, building area 138 square metres
• Front storehouse (06-0204): earth-walled storehouse, single storey, sheet-metal roof, building area 32 square metres
• Rear storehouse (06-0205): earth-walled storehouse, single storey with part on 2 storeys, sheet-metal roof, building area 46 square metres
• Stable (06-0206): wooden, single storey, thatched with temporary sheet-metal roofing, building area 32 square metres
• Work shed and cowshed (06-0207): wooden, single storey, thatched with temporary sheet-metal roofing, building area 68 square metres

Because the storehouses, animal sheds and work buildings were listed alongside the house, it is the farmstead as a whole, not a single farmhouse, that now has protection.

Visiting and Getting There

The property is owned by Abe Shoten Co., Ltd. As of October 2026 we could find no public announcement of open days or tours in official sources. Please do not enter the grounds, and stay off the surrounding paddies and farm tracks.

The best way to see the buildings is through the photographs in the Agency for Cultural Affairs database, one set for each building. The document Yamagata Prefecture issued at the time of registration also includes photographs of the main house inside and out and of the four outbuildings.

The address is 1629 Kubo-ni, Utamaru, Nagai City, about 2.4 kilometres south of Tokiniwa Station on the Yamagata Railway Flower Nagai Line in a straight line. That figure is measured from the map; there is no official access guide.

About the Name

The name is read Kyū Matsuoka-ke Jūtaku, and the prefix kyū (旧) marks it as the former home of the Matsuoka family. The rear storehouse is called ushiro no kura, a counterpart to the maegura or front storehouse that stands before the house. Other registered properties called Matsuoka Family Residence exist in Fukuoka and Kochi prefectures, so adding Nagai or Utamaru helps when searching.